Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette, 1961)

Betty Schneider and Giani Esposito in Paris Belongs to Us

Anne Goupil: Betty Schneider
Gérard Lenz: Giani Esposito
Terry Yordan: Françoise Prévost
Philip Kaufman: Daniel Crohem
Pierre Goupil: François Maistre
Jean-Marc: Jean-Claude Brialy
De Georges: Jean-Marie Robain

Director: Jacques Rivette
Screenplay: Jacques Rivette, Jean Gruault
Cinematography: Charles L. Bitsch
Film editing: Denise de Casabianca
Music: Philippe Arthuis

Paris belongs to the French, which is one of the problems Francophobes have with it. And there's much for them to find problems with in Jacques Rivette's first feature, one of the key works of the French New Wave. Even I found myself squirming at the gallery of poseurs present at the party near the beginning of the film. But then I realized that the film is a kind of critique of poseurs: Everyone plays a role, it seems to be saying, and everyone tries to bend the narrative in their direction. The narrative of Paris Belongs to Us is a deconstruction of the political paranoia thriller: Its characters are caught up on a vast international right-wing conspiracy that may or may not exist. The idea that it does exist seems to be supported by the fact that several of its characters are exiles from Franco's Spain and Joe McCarthy's America, and the fact that some of them end up dead. The idea that it exists only in the minds of the characters seems to be supported by the fact that none of these anxious artists and intellectuals ever manages to accomplish anything: They're paralyzed by their own paranoia and egotism, or rather, like Lewis Carroll's Red Queen, they're running fast to stay in the same place. Rivette admired Lewis Carroll, so we can see his protagonist, Anne Goupil, as Alice in the Parisian pays des merveilles. She falls into the chaos of a production of Shakespeare's Pericles, a mess of a play that he probably wrote only half of, directed by Gérard Lenz, who is somehow ensnared in the political mesh that claimed the life of a composer named Juan, who had taped a guitar piece as accompaniment for the production. But after his suicide (if it was one) the tape has disappeared. Anne takes on the job of finding the tape, which leads her deeper into the mesh and into encounters with more strange characters. In the conclusion, nothing is concluded except the lives of several people, and the viewers are left wondering, "What was all that about?" Which is exactly what Rivette wants them to wonder. The film is like life: full of loose ends.

Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000)

Conceived and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Cinematography: Plasong Klimborron, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom

We tell stories to try to find meaning in what our senses provide us from the bewilderment of force and matter in which we exist. Stories become myths which become religions which eventually become science, our only bulwark of knowledge. Even when we sleep, our dreams are stories crafted out of the incessant neural storm. So it's not surprising that we love stories so much that we spend much of our lives telling them and hearing them. The story around which Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mysterious Object at Noon whirls is begun by a traumatized young woman, who has just told her own story of being sold into servitude by her own father. Prompted to tell another story, one that she has heard or read, she speaks of a boy who can't walk, so he's tutored by a young woman. One day, she excuses herself from the lesson to go to the bathroom, and when she doesn't return soon, the boy rolls his wheelchair to another room where he finds the teacher unconscious. As he tries to move her to a bed, a mysterious object rolls out from her skirts. And there the young woman's story stops, only to be continued across the country of Thailand by a number of willing narrators prompted by the director and his crew. In the various elaborations on the premise, the teacher receives a name, "Dogfahr."* The object transforms itself into a boy, but one with shape-shifting powers, so he also takes the form of the teacher herself, leading to a confrontation between Dogfahr and her doppelgänger. Some narrators attempt to provide a backstory for the disabled boy: He survived a plane crash during the war that killed his parents. The story takes on political and social overtones, as well as being colored by movies and TV shows. The narrators range from villagers to a traveling troupe of players to a group of eager schoolchildren, as well as the filmmaker himself, who tries to convert these stories into a movie. The result is a fascinating mélange of fable and fact, of the imagination and the literal reality of Thailand as seen through Weerasethakul's camera eye. It's a hypernarrative: a story about telling stories.

*That transliteration appears in the subtitles, but it's often seen as "Dokfa" in sources that attempt to translate the film's original title, "Dokfa in the Devil's Hand."